The present invention relates to blocks of festooned material, and in particular to a process for splicing and feeding the material from multiple blocks in a manufacturing process.
The concept of festooning materials is widely known and used in packaging many different types of materials for subsequent supply to a machine or manufacturing process. In many instances, festooning has advantages over supplying the material in the form of a wound package or roll. For example, with festooned packages, there is no need for complex and costly unwind devices. The festooned packages are easily transportable and can be located directly adjacent to a manufacturing machine. Unlike wound or roll packages, tension control of the festooned material is generally not an issue. Festooning has found particular favor in the packaging of fibrous non-woven strips of material.
With festooning, the material strip is typically laid down into a container or on a base in a traversing back-and-forth manner such that a length of the strip is folded into an individual xe2x80x9cstackxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9clane.xe2x80x9d The stacks may be horizontally or vertically disposed. Multiple adjacent stacks may be provided in a single package in parallel side-by-side fashion with each stack having its own leading end and tail end. Such packages are conventionally referred to as xe2x80x9cmulti-lanexe2x80x9d festooned xe2x80x9cblocks.xe2x80x9d These block configurations are particularly useful in the manufacture of disposable absorbent articles such as diapers, feminine care products, incontinence products, and the like, wherein strips of absorbent core material must be quickly and efficiently fed into the manufacturing line.
In order to provide a generally continuous supply of the festooned material in a manufacturing process, it is necessary to repeatedly splice the tail end of one stack with the leading end of another stack. This has typically been done by connecting stacks within a block by splicing the tail end of one stack with the leading end of the adjacent stack such that all of the stacks within a block are exhausted before another block is spliced into the process. Reference is made, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,608 and WO 01/42119.
The present invention relates to an alternate process for splicing and feeding festooned stacks from multiple blocks.
Objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the following description, or may be obvious from the description, or may be learned through practice of the invention.
The present invention provides a process for splicing and feeding festooned material from multi-lane blocks of the material. The process includes providing a first multi-lane block of side-by-side stacks of the material with each stack having a leading end and a tail end. At least one additional multi-lane block of side-by-side stacks of the material is located in close proximity to the first block, each stack in the second block having a leading end and a tail end. The blocks may be oriented with respect to each other in any pattern or configuration. For example, the blocks may be arranged one above the other in a vertical configuration, or disposed generally in the same horizontal plane.
It should be appreciated that the present process is not limited to any particular configuration of multi-lane block. For example, the blocks may be essentially free-standing wherein the stacks are generally laid down onto a base member but are otherwise unsupported. With this configuration, the blocks are typically wrapped with a film or other suitable material until they are to be used. In alternate embodiments, the blocks may include any manner of support structure, cage structure, walls, etc. It is only necessary that the blocks allow for some way to connect or splice the tail ends and lead ends of the stacks in each block, desirably from the same side of the blocks.
In one embodiment, the process further involves splicing the tail end of the first stack of the first block to the leading end of the first stack of a second block, and splicing the tail end of the first stack of the second block to the leading end of the second stack of the first block, and so forth. The splicing sequence is repeated for subsequent stacks until all of the stacks of the first block and the second block have been alternately spliced such that tail ends of the stacks in the first block are spliced with the lead ends of the stacks in the second block, and the tail ends of the stacks in the second block are spliced with the lead ends of the stacks in the first block. A lead end of the first stack of the first block is delivered to a manufacturing line and the spliced stacks are consumed in alternating fashion between the blocks. This embodiment may be used if all of the stacks from the multiple blocks are to be fed to the same machine or manufacturing process.
In an alternate embodiment, multiple blocks may be spliced to supply multiple machines. Due to material variances between stacks of a block, it may be desired to feed certain stacks to one machine or process and certain other stacks within the same blocks to a different machine or process. The present splicing method is particularly well suited to accommodate this situation. For example, in one embodiment, the middle stacks of the multiple blocks may be spliced together in accordance with the present method and supplied to one machine while the outer stacks of the same blocks may be sliced together and supplied to another machine. Numerous variations of this concept are obviously available.
It should be appreciated that any number of blocks may be spliced together in accordance with the present process. For example, three blocks may be spliced wherein the tail end of the first stack of block one is spliced to the lead end of the first stack of block two. The tail end of the first stack of block two is spliced to the lead end of the first stack of block three. The tail end of the first stack of block three is spliced to the lead end of the second stack of block one. The sequence is repeated until all of the stacks in the blocks are alternately connected.
The inventive process also may include splicing the tail end of the last stack of the last block to an additional source of festooned material. This additional source may be, for example, additional blocks of multi-lane side-by-side stacks spliced together in accordance with the invention. These additional blocks may be spliced together as the first set of blocks is being consumed in the manufacturing process. The additional blocks are then moved to the manufacturing line and spliced to the tail end of the last stack of the last block.